Overclocking

Before I get into the actual overclocking, I just want to comment on a few oddities and features that are related. The first as I mentioned before is that for me, there was no sign of the RapidBoost options. Having read the manual cover to cover, there was no sign of it in there either. Also, to begin my manual overclocking, I did what anybody would do and disabled anything that could possibly hinder my efforts. However, despite disabling EIST in the BIOS, my CPU was still happily changing speeds dynamically with the load. Lastly, MSI have an overclocking failure feature that when an overclock prevents post, after the 4th boot attempt, the BIOS is set to defaults automatically, negating the need to reset the BIOS via jumper or in this case via a button. This never worked for me; infact neither did the CMOS reset buttons. In the end, if ever I was forced to reset the BIOS, I had to remove the battery to get the system to POST again.

Stability wise, if I left everything on automatic, the MSI P45 Platinum was solid. If however I started playing with the settings, I would get issues of non-post and be forced to remove the battery. With that in mind, I ended up having to leave pretty much everything on automatic. I dialled down the Multiplier from 8 to 6 and began to raise the FSB. I started at 400 and that was as far as I got. No matter what else I did it would never go over 400. Keep in mind that for general use I run this CPU at 400 FSB, Multiplier x8 daily, it was pretty dissapointing. It's a real shame as the hardware appears to be absolutely fantastic, but the software and BIOS is letting the side down.

*Update

As hoped, MSI have (at time of writing) just released a new 1.1 BIOS. But flashing the BIOS turned out to be an adventure on it's own.

The BIOS file is 4MB, so that counts out installing via floppy, not that I've attached one to a machine in over 2 years anyway. Next logical choice is to use Windows software. MSI Live Monitor didn't pick up on the update at all, telling me I was already up to date. So third option is a bootable USB Flash Drive. No Flash drive I tried would boot. They were seen at POST, and the option was in the F11 boot menu, but they simply refused to boot. In the end, I made a bootable SD card and flashed that way. MSI really need to include a better way to do this, even adding a way to use a local file to flash with to their MSI Live Update, or better still some way to do it via the BIOS. We've seen some boards with onboard flash memory for use with Vista's Readyboost; wouldn't it be great if we could download a BIOS to that and flash from an option in the BIOS settings?

So, new BIOS. The new BIOS loses it's 'beta' feel; no longer are there corrupt letters in the Memory SPD list, the RapidBoost options are now there, the PC auto resets as it should if you overclock too far. A ClockGen Options entry has been added, as well as two extra slots for saving your settings. SpeedStep finally acts on the setting in the BIOS rather than remaining permanently enabled. Running the same batch of tests as the previous BIOS yielded little to no change in the performance however, and we were still unable to break the 400 FSB mark. I switched (again) to some Kingston ram, but this afforded no change in FSB overclocking. It would seem that running the ram at 800 is fine, but anything after this and you have problems. Setting the divider so the memory was below this 800 mark didn't help. However I was able to now tweak the memory options manually without the board failing POST, so some progress has certainly been made. Hopefully the next BIOS update will allow the board to raise it's FSB too. And of course, as with any item running out of spec, Your Mileage May Vary.

**Update No 2

MSI were understandbly a little dissapointed that the P45 Platinum wouldn't overclock as well as expected, and I was dissapointed as well because the hardware really is great. A shout out to the folks in the MSI forums, as well MSI themselves who have emailed me constantly with suggestions and ideas. In the end, it was a combination of MSI's Tech support, some user experiences in the MSI forums and a new BIOS, v 1.22. This has allowed me to finally raise the FSB, as I knew it should have done from the beggining.

470 was the highest stable (Orthos and 3dMark tested), although the board was able to get into Windows and run randomly up to 480. Anything over 480 resulted in non-POST. I've adjusted my Final Words accordingly

Final Words

A fine wine (or woman) improves with age they say. The comes across as fine wine which has improved nicely after a couple of BIOS updates. The hardware is excellent, without a doubt some of the best we have seen come out of , if not the best, and was only held back in overclocking by an immature BIOS.

have made a lot of changes of late to the way they package, present and even design their hardware, and it shows here quite clearly. Starting at the beggining, the packaging for the has changed to a box-in-a-box affair which we rather like.

Simplicity is the name of the game with the , from the industry following color coding on the DIMM Slots to the inclusion of the M-Connectors. 

Even in the BIOS, the majority of options can be simply left on automatic, but that's not to say you don't have options to dive in and get your hands dirty. Speaking of the BIOS, MSI have said that they will be offering a UEFI update for their P45 based lineup in the near future. How this will change things for the is anyones guess, but one thing is for sure, when it comes to the BIOS, the should be updated to 1.1 or more for you to get the best out of it. We had a less then perfect time when it came to overclocking the , as the highest FSB we could manage was a relatively low 400 FSB, and this was with two different offical BIOS. The Third BIOS and a few voltage bumps got us out of the middle of the pack and up near pole position, with the final stable overclock being 470 FSB.

During our testing, we noticed that memory performance, while around what we would expect from a P45 chipset, wasn't as good as we would have hoped, nor as good as the more mature P35 based boards we used from previous reviews. Still, it took time for the P35's to really shine so hopefully when the BIOS is tweaked we will see good things.

The board is laid out fantastically, and the new Circu-pipe 2 setup is both attractive and performs well. The hardware appears to be rock solid, and for the lazy overclockers out there, the ability for the P45 Platinum to reset itself after a failed overclock is a boon. With a newer BIOS, the good really starts to shine and show itself to be a great board. If and when update the to the UEFI BIOS, we shall certainly be back for round two.

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